Sunday, February 6, 2011

Weekend Wrap Up

1.Although the hostess of Top ChefPadma Lakshmi owns a funky loft apartment in New York City's East Village that she bought in January of 2008 for $1,650,000 she's reportedly on the hunt for a new pad that she and her baby Krishna can call home. According to the fine folks at Curbed (via the New York Post) Miss Lakshmi was recently spotted taking a tour of a 4,535 square foot pre-war pad in the Village with 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and a pocketbook punishing $10,995,000 asking price.

2.There's no celeb connection on this one, kitty cats, but we're going to have a looky-loo anyways because this house in Houston, TX is a real damn doozy that's really not to be missed. Before you go any further we suggest y'all get a big fat nerve pill down in you, buckle your real estate safety belts and prepare yourself for a bumpy ride through some hard core decorative despicable of the highest magnitude.

3.A week or more ago we dissed and discussed an historical mansion in London's celebrity-packed Highgate 'hood last listed at £7,950,000–that's 12,803,600 American at today's rates–and purchased by British waif-model pioneer Kate Moss. Some of her (alleged and reported) plans for the new place include installing a $65,000 kitchen, an entertainment room with stage and karaoke machine and a $1,500,000 gym. Pleeze. Who spends a million and a half clams on a home body torture facility ? That's just plain ludicrous.

Anyhoo, this week comes along the real estate news that the string bean unloaded her former home in St. John's Wood for £10,000,000. That's $16,105,200 at today's rates according to our currency conversion contraption and four million more than she paid for her new place in Highgate so it seems the model knows how to make money.

4.Is professional dribbler Kobe Bryant building himself a fancy 14,500 square foot castle with a two-level sport court in the fancy-schmancy gated community of Pelican Crest down behind the Orange Curtain on California's Newport Coast? Could be. Mister Bryant already owns two mansions in the nearby Pelican Ridge community so Your Mama can't fathom why he'd want a third mansion in such close proximity to the two he already owns but then again who are we to question the real estate ways of the rich and famous?

5.Anyone who's ever craved a Big or Little Edie Beale moment can now rent their famous Grey Gardens estate in East Hampton, NY. The cost: $135,000 for two weeks in August. A few flicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that works out to an astonishing $9,642 and 86 damn cents per day.

The current owners–writer Sally Quinn and former executive editor of The Washington Post Ben Bradlee–purchased the derelict house in 1979 and worked that shit over something fierce, hunnies. We're not sure how they got rid of the cat crap smell but for nearly 10 grand a day they damn well better have, right? The 6,000-ish square foot shingle-style cottage has seven bedrooms and four bathrooms and the grounds include a clay tennis court, gunite swimming pool and thatched-roof pool house.

6.Black Eyed Peas front woman Fergie and her model turned actor man-mate Josh Duhamel (Las Vegas) appear to be in need of some temporary East Coast digs. Mister Duhamel was reportedly espied having a look-see at a 1,600 square foot apartment in a newly constructed rental tower called The Corner located on the corner of Broadway and West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The 15th floor spread features a curving wall of floor to ceiling windows in the living/dining/kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 (window-free) terliting facilities, a stacked washer/dryer closet, a secret safe for stashing jewels drugs and other valuables, and a 830 square foot set back terrace.

On the west coast Miss Fergie and Mister Duhamel live in the hills high above Los Angeles' upscale Brentwood area in an 8,232 square feet contempo-style crib with 8 bedrooms and 8.5 poopers that they snatched up in April of 2007 for $4,875,000 from director Brian De Palma (Mission: Impo.ssible, Bonfire of the Vanities, Scarface)

7.The remarried widow of deceased celebrated celebrity caricaturist king Al Hirschfeld has heaved the artist's long-time New York City townhouse on the market with and asking price of $5,295,000. Mister Hirschfeld, who went to meet the Great Illustrator in the Sky back in 2003, purchased the 20-foot wide four-story Queen Anne-style townhouse in 1947 and painted the exterior bubblegum pink with white trim. The interior spaces of the 4,160 square foot are equally as colorful–if dingy and dusty looking with a lot of duct tape holding stuff together–and include 4-5 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms.

8.There is some ugly business going down at the legendary Dakota building in New York City, people. U-G-L-Y, ugly.

17 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I quite applaud whoever did the house in Houston. Of course the decorative establishment is scandalized. But I quite like the insouciant finger he or she is giving to the "dec. est." and its canons of taste. If Picasso hadn't given the finger to the art world we would still be looking at foggy impressionist paintings today. So here's to the upraised finger. Long may it stay erect.

Jeebus, Mama! I've been off the bourbon and ginger ales since dislocating my shoulder, but that house in Houston is driving me back to the bottle. What in the fresh hell is going on in that office/dead animal preserve?!? And just what in the name of all that is good and proper is the creature in that painting hung in what I assume is the great room?!?

I loved hunting for Ninas in Al Hirshfeld's drawings. Wish I could buy his townhome and preserve it.

So Teddy Forstmann is buying Adam Dell's baby mama an apartment? Bitch just can't live amongst the hoi polloi now, can she?

…and apparently I’m also too dizzy to spell correctly. That’s “navigate” down the narrow, winding road. It could be because of the liguid Saphire, but I'm going to stick with my story and blame it on the house. Cheers!

The Houston house decor has us waxing nostalgic: It reminds us, more in vibe than actual appearance, of The New Prelude, a long gone and deeply missed gay bar in New Hope PA, which was done up in ersatz art deco on the cheap.

Madam Pince: I can see you now at the debut of Strawinsky's Sacre du Printemps, rioting and screaming bloody murder and throwing your shoes at the stage of that great, revolutionary ballet. Philistines are always amongst us.

1). Remember before the PC days when, if a woman went from man to man to get ahead without any talent of her own we called it sleeping your way to the top?

;-)

Kidding. Or as Miss Kathy would say, "Allegedly..."

2). Oh my Sweet Baby Jesus; I can't feel my eyes...

3). Proof positive that one can climb out of shit (literally), festoon oneself with a literary mantle, and reinvent oneself as someone who supposedly matters.

4). The boy has a thing for pelicans... but better that than little children.

5). Rumor has it that on those infrequent, yet all to predictable Hampton days when there is no onshore breeze & the humidity's just right that the house does indeed still suffer from a quiff of cat pee.

Kate Moss has never stepped foot in a gym so she's unlikely to be spending $1.5M on one! Those figures seem ludicrous, $65K for a kitchen in London? For a large house? Yeah, good luck ... £40K barely buys you a decent kitchen from the mass retailers never mind the likes of Boffi, Varenna etc..

She should go to Tsunami in Marylebone, the most amazing kitchen designers on the planet.